To the Editor:

Sen. (Seth) Goodall doesn’t want the money from the future sale of the Maine liquor business to go to pay the hospitals as proposed by Gov. Le- Page. This money is owed to them from all the people Goodall and Gov. Baldacci added to the Medicaid rolls when Baldacci was governor. Goodall wants the money to go to the General Fund instead, so he can use it to add to Maine’s already bloated welfare rolls. Besides welfare spending, Democrats’ favorite form of spending is deficit spending.

He said he is going to closely scrutinize LePage’s proposal to sell Maine’s liquor business. Too bad he didn’t do the same thing to Baldacci’s plan. Baldacci made a very bad deal for Maine, one that costs the state $38 million each year. But it did one thing that Baldacci and Goodall wanted — and that was to give them a onetime payment of $125 million. They used that money to cover the Department of Health and Human Services budget shortfall caused by all the people Baldacci added to the Medicaid rolls.

Goodall must think the doctors, nurses and staff at Maine hospitals expect no pay for their services, and work just for the pleasure of taking care of all the Medicaid people he helped add to these rolls. Also, the hospitals don’t expect any reimbursement from the state for taking care of all those Medicaid patients.

If you wonder why your private insurance costs so much, look no further than the unpaid Medicaid expenses owed by the state. The hospitals have got to try to make this money up somewhere.

Goodall is great at loading up the Medicaid rolls but, like most Democrats, he is not too keen on paying the bill for it when it comes due.

Raymond T. West
Topsham